Visual and Instrumental Assessments of Color Differences in Automotive Coatings

Abstract

The interest in gonioapparent pigments (metallic, pearlescent, interference, or diffractive) has increased in the last few years, especially for applications in the automotive industry. To assure a proper characterization of colors with gonioapparent pigments, commercial devices have appeared to characterize the color in different geometries, which are called multiangle spectrophotometers. As the gonioapparent pigments and multiangle instruments are relatively new, no studies exist regarding the instrumental-based procedure followed in the industry, and if the results provided are in agreement with the observer perception.

Consequently, the main objective of this study was to examine the correlation of the instrumental color differences with visual assessments. The instrumental color difference was calculated with the color difference formula AUDI2000 (specific for this sector) between the pairs of similar samples of three types of coated panels (solid, metallic, and pearlescent). The values measured by a telespectroradiometer in a directional lighting booth and the colorimetric values obtained by means of a multiangle spectrophotometer BYK-mac were considered for this purpose. Additionally, a visual experiment was conducted to quantify the color difference by using the gray-scale method.

The results revealed that an acceptable instrumental correlation existed despite the visual and the instrumental correlation being worse. In particular, it was checked that observers accepted a larger number of color pairs, that is, the visual color difference was smaller than the tolerance demanded by the industry (derived from AUDI2000).